Greens risk repeating mistakes of the past over antisemitism

In recent years, there has been a spate of attacks on our religious communities – but no group has felt the brunt of this more than Britain’s Jewish communities. Many now live in fear after wave after wave of arson attacks, public harassment and stabbings.

Our government is taking the threat seriously, raising the terrorism threat level to severe for the first time in five years, strengthening the visible police presence in Jewish communities and crucially addressing the “malign threat” that foreign actors like Iran pose in fermenting hatred against British Jews.

While Labour has turned the page on the antisemitism crisis that beset it in the Corbyn years, the scars – and the need for vigilence – remain. However, some of the most high profile people expelled from Labour during that period seem to have found a home in the Green Party, which is now struggling with its own antisemitism.

The arrest of two Green candidates over alleged antisemitism has sparked anger within Labour at the party’s perceived tolerance of intolerance – with Steve Reed calling on the Greens to “ditch every candidate who has made racist comments, apologise, and tell us how they intend to root the antisemites out of their party”.

There are clear similarities between the Green’s recent surge in support and the momentum behind Corbynism; a rapid influx of members without sufficient scrutiny, a leadership slow to act on early warning signs, and individuals with extreme views gaining positions of influence and standing for public office.

NEC member Peter Mason has seen this play out before, with Labour facing the moral and electoral cost of inaction. In a piece for LabourList, he warns of allowing hate speech to be normalised in our political discourse.

“The Greens will one day, even if not today, rue the day they allowed the old party of progressive environmentalism to be overrun by the same tendency that took the Labour Party to the precipice of oblivion.”

The lesson from Labour’s past is clear: when prejudice is tolerated, it spreads – and any party that fails to confront it risks paying a far higher price later.

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